There was a time when Chinese smartphone makers had not entered India and Samsung and the likes were enjoying their monopoly. It was only a matter of time before these Chinese companies outdid their Korean counterparts.

Antutu has published a report that analyses the popularity of the thousands of smartphones available across the world, and in the larger markets like the US, China, India, Germany, Russia and a few countries from the South-East Asia. The report takes into considering the data available for the first half of this year.

Global Rankings

The top 4 most popular smartphones were from Samsung and this shows that the Korean company still has a good command over the world in terms of handsets. Note 5, S6, S6 Edge and S7 are the top rankers, followed by the Redmi Note 3 from Xiaomi.

However, the next five have Chinese players like LeEco and Meizu taking the lead. This shows the vast reach of Chinese smartphones and how they have been pitched against Korean companies and Apple. It’s funny to note that iPhone does not appear in the list, considering it is widely used by the people across the globe.

It is also worth noting that the Nexus smartphone don’t appear on the list, which sort of buries Google’s fight to consolidate and standardize its ecosystem. Customers probably are still more biased towards hardware as opposed to software and user interface.

India Rankings

The popularity share of the most popular smartphone in India is nearly double of the next smartphone. At 12.45%, Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 leads the pack, followed by OnePlus 2 at 7.7% and LeEco 1S at 5.74%.

Interestingly, top 8 positions have been captured by Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi, LeEco, OnePlus and Lenovo. Other phones like Samsung Galaxy J7 and Nexus 6P rank 9th and 10th respectively.

Xiaomi and OnePlus seem to have taken the Indian market by storm, and with the launch of OnePlus 3 and Xiaomi Mi 5, we can expect these shares to increase.

“It should be mentioned that, the Indian domestic brands are actually also very strong, the manufacturer Micromax was used to learn the custom-built ROM model from the Chinese manufacturers to launch the newly brand smartphone brand YU which is well welcomed in India”, the report said.

Rankings in other countries

In China, Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 was more popular by a huge margin, followed by Samsung Galaxy S7. However, most other players were Chinese, as one would expect. Hong Kong also saw similar statistics, but more evenly distributed between Chinese handset makers and Samsung.

As one would also expect, most popular smartphones in Korea were all Korean made – Samsung and LG. Basically, name all the latest models of these companies and they were there on that list.

Coming to the US, Samsung seems to have taken the lead with its 6 flagships in the top 10, along with Google Nexus 5X, 6 and 6P. OnePlus also managed to reach top 10, thanks to its value for money proposition and good backing from software devs.

What do these rankings indicate?

The report from Antutu primarily indicates that the companies that are lagging need to buckle up. All jokes aside, these rankings do not indicate the sales of a smartphone, simply the popularity of that phone. However, there is one thing that they do express, and that is the value for money.

All the top smartphones above have one thing is common – they offer extremely good value for their money. We’re talking about Xiaomi, OnePlus and Samsung. Yes, because of the purchasing power parity, Samsung’s phones in the US do not seem that big a deal as the ones in India, and also the network carriers there have a contract plan which makes the deal sweeter.

OnePlus phones have been rising in popularity and the latest flagship, OnePlus 3 is a testament to it. A Chinese company with just one phone, not taking OnePlus X into consideration here, has taken itself to a level only Apple did with its iPhones.

Popularity is also a function of advertising and marketing, and it is quite possible some companies are not giving much attention to them. Nevertheless, Chinese companies are ruling the market and will continue to do so around the globe.